Saturday, January 9, 2016

My Trip to Burma: The Ups (free seat upgrade!) and Downs (lost luggage) of Getting There

Normally, I write my blog posts after the trip, but I recently bought a little keyboard for my iPad mini, allowing me to type on an actual keyboard, which I can do reasonably fast, rather than on a touch screen, which I am terrible at.

Initially, I was worried about a bunch of things.The weather report in New York on our day of departure was not looking good. They predicted lots of rain, and wind. I was concerned, because our connecting
flight from Beijing to Yangon is tight:just an hour and ten minutes.Even a small delay could affect our connection.But the rain and wind never
materialized.

When checking in at the airport, I saw that for an extra
$150, you could upgrade from economy to “premium economy”.It’s a little extra legroom, butmore importantly, it moves us up from seat 58
to seat 32, right near the exit, so we can de-plane more quickly in Beijing to
catch our connecting flight to Yangon.I
decided to splurge.When it was time to
pay for the upgrade, however, the guy at the counter – he was a bit of a space cadet,
but he had great hair – didn’t really seem to know what he was doing.After a few minutes fumbling with his computer,
he just handed us our passports and boarding passes and said that he couldn’t
get the computer to work, so our upgrades were free!How cool is that?!

Arriving at the departure gate, the line was enormously
long.The line for First Class and Business
Class was much shorter.Our tickets
clearly said Economy, but I felt we were on a hot streak with the free upgrade, so we got on the
fancy-shmancy line and hoped for the best.When we got up to the ticket-taker, she processed my boarding pass with
not even a pause.I’m getting good at
this:)

I see that our flight is due to arrive in Beijing a little
early.I hope that really is the case,
becausemissing our connecting flight
would be disastrous.Okay, time to put
away the electronics, we’re getting ready to leave.(Ooooh, flight attendant just handed me a
steaming hot towel! I can definitely get used to Premium Economy)

Okay….I’ve read two magazines and did the New York magazine
crossword puzzle.Tried sleeping, but it’s
no use.Economy, “Premium” Economy,
whatever. I have never been able to sleep on an airplane, and this trip is no
exception.What’s driving me crazy about
this flight is the temperature.It’s
freezing!The air at my feet is
absolutely frosty.There are vents all
along the floorboards, and they are blowing out arctic air, and my feet are absolutely frozen.I’m trying to block the air with those little
airline pillows, to little avail.I’ve
got a thin little airline blanket wrapped around my feet several times.Useless.Sigh.Seven and a half more
hours, and we’ll be in Beijing.According to my little screen, we land at 6:30 pm.Our flight leaves at 7:30.Boarding is at 7:00.The exit door is ten feet away, so we (Mark
and I) should be able to disembark quickly and dash to our gate.Brrrr… I’m freezing!

Two hours later:This is crazy.It is literally
like a goddamn meat locker in here!

***

Well, the second leg of the flight was the evil opposite of
the first leg.Our connection was
tight.We arrived at the enormous
Beijing airport and then had to walk a vast distance to the international
transfer area, where we encountered Passport Control. A hassle.After that, we had to go through another
security screening.The line was long,
but it was moving relatively fast.I put
my carry-on on the conveyor, along with my iPhone and iPad.I walked through the metal detector and it
beeped.I was pulled aside and was
hand-scanned.Whoops.My keys.I handed my keys to the hunky young security guy, who scrutinized the
keychain (from the van Gogh museum, in Amsterdam) for five minutes, as if it were a bomb
detonator.He then commenced an extremely, ridiculously comprehensive
pat-down which, given how hot and sexy he was in his uniform, I normally would
have enjoyed very much.However, our
plane was scheduled to depart in 18 minutes!We finally broke away and started looking for our gate, E59.I looked up.We were at E2.Ugh.We zoomed to E59. No plane.Just a little shuttle bus to take us
to the tarmac for our plane.I didn’t
realize our plane to Yangon was that small.The shuttle driver clearly did not possess the same sense of urgency
that we did, as he fiddled with his thermos and adjusted his rear-view mirror a
dozen times.After what seemed like an
eternity, he took us (and one other desperate straggler) to our plane, where we
were met by the stares of the entire passenger manifest.Apparently, they were waiting for us, the last three passengers, before we could depart.We self-consciously took our seats,
disrupting the woman on the aisle in our row, who had gotten settled in very
comfortably. Sorry, lady.

It’s funny how quickly you get used to “Premium Economy”.We were back in regular ol’ Economy now, and
it was absolutely inhumane.We were
sardines in a can headed to Southeast Asia.A sweltering can, at that.From
NYC to Beijing, the plane was glacial.From Beijing to Yangon, a sauna.

We started chatting with the woman at the end of our row. She turned out to be a very cool woman named Renee from San Francisco. She was traveling by herself, which she had done many times in the past. She packs light (carry-on only; she never checks any bags, she said), and had a similar itinerary to ours. Chatting with her was really nice. Our itineraries overlapped in some spots, so perhaps we'll run into her at a domestic airport.

I see on my iPad here that we’re due to land in exactly an hour.I’ve been up for 27 hours, the last 20 of
which have been on planes or in airports.

***

Well, the most inconvenient thing that could happen did
happen.Our luggage was lost.The connection from Beijing to Yangon was
tight, and while we were able to zoom through the airport from our first airplane to our second one, the baggage handlers didn't transfer our luggage with that same sense of urgency. This is a huge logistical problem because there are no
flights fron Beijing to Yangon tomorrow. The next flight is Sunday afternoon.We, however, are leaving Yangon Sunday morning, to fly to Bagan.

We were met at the airport by a guy from the travel agency named Zaw, and a driver named Tarzan (seriously). Zaw said this happens pretty frequently, and that he’ll try to arrange to have someone here to receive the bag at the
airport on Sunday, and then put the bag on the flight to Bagan. This sounds promising, but I am skeptical.All of my shirts, socks, shorts and
underwear, both guidebooks, and all of my toiletries, includig my contact
lenses, are on that bag.Sigh.I'm an experienced traveler, but this is my
first lost bag. Renee from San Francisco never checks a bag when she travels, and I see why. Im not going to let this
put a damper on what is going to be a magical trip, but what started out so
wonderful (free upgrade to Premium Economy) has now become a bit of a
bummer. Well, no point in fretting.

We arrive at our hotel, the Grand United 21st Downtown Hotel. At least our room is nice. It's 12:30 a.m. Time to call it a day. Tomorrow: a full itinerary of historic buildings and sacred pagodas.

Dr. Arnold Plotnick (MS, DVM, ACVIM) blogs about professional and personal life experiences as an expert in the field of feline veterinary medicine.

Dr. Arnold Plotnick is a board-certified veterinary internist, feline expert, and the founder of Manhattan Cat Specialists. In addition to his medical work, he is an award-winning veterinary medicine writer.